Abstract
This paper presents a systematic approach for analyzing and explaining the nature of social groups. I argue against prominent views that attempt to unify all social groups or to divide them into simple typologies. Instead I argue that social groups are enormously diverse, but show how we can investigate their natures nonetheless. I analyze social groups from a bottom-up perspective, constructing profiles of the metaphysical features of groups of specific kinds. We can characterize any given kind of social group with four complementary profiles: its “construction” profile, its “extra essentials” profile, its “anchor” profile, and its “accident” profile. Together these provide a framework for understanding the nature of groups, help classify and categorize groups, and shed light on group agency.
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Notes
For a number of approaches to this question see Greenwood (1997). See also Sartre (1960), Held (1970), Gruner (1976), French (1984), McGary (1986), May (1987), Gilbert (1989), Harré (1997), Graham (2002), Brewer (2003), Greenwood (2003), Pettit (2003), Sheehy (2006a, b), Meijers (2007), Tuomela (2007), List and Pettit (2011), Ritchie (2013), Tollefsen (2015).
Ritchie (2013, 2015). Ritchie also notes that there may be other categories of groups, such as mobs, queues, and non-human groups. The main categorization, though, is between organized groups and feature groups, and similar categorizations are put forward by many other theorists. My aim in challenging this categorization is to cast doubt on the utility of attempts to classify social groups largely, even if not exclusively, into broad categories like these. In this paper, I do not discuss non-human groups. I am grateful to Ritchie for comments and clarifications on these and subsequent points.
I am not claiming that there is no possible distinction between groups manifesting some sort of organization and those that do not. As I discuss below, however, there are so many cross-cutting lines to group design and organization that I doubt the utility of any one way of making the distinction. And in any case, if there is such a distinction it is far more complex to draw than it might first appear.
For this reason, certain accounts of shared intention (e.g., Bratman 2014) expressly limit the scope of their accounts to very special kinds of groups. In Bratman’s case, the category of “modest sociality,” which involves fairly substantial and symmetric attitudes on the part of all the members of the group.
Merton (1957). Merton gives numerous examples, including kinship groups, social strata, and others (pp. 53ff). Some of the illustrations Merton gives are of groups that members are aware of but that have latent functions, while other illustrations are groups that members need not even be aware of.
Specifically, this is Ritchie’s expression of the criterion of identity: (Ritchie 2015, p. 316)
(IDENTITY) A group G1 and a group G2 are identical if, and only if,
- 1.
for all t and all w, the structure of G1 at t at w is identical to the structure of G2 at t at w, and
- 2.
for all t and all w and all x, x occupies node n in the structure of G1 at t at w if, and only if, x occupies n in the structure of G2 at t at w.
As with all criteria of identity, all the interesting work is done in the right-to-left implication; the left-to-right implication is trivial. (If \(\hbox {G}_{1} =\hbox {G}_{2}\), then they have the same properties at all times and worlds, so a fortiori they will have the same structure and structure-ordered-members at all times and worlds.)
- 1.
An additional problem with Ritchie’s characterization of organized groups is that this criterion admits that a group’s structure can change from any time to any other, and from any world to any other. In fact, (IDENTITY) is compatible with a group having a radically discontinuous and changing structure at every moment in time and in every world. This seems bizarre, but the criterion gives us no constraints on structural change, nor does it give us any information about the persistence of a group over time. If there is to be any force at all to the idea that organized groups are structured, then Ritchie needs to give constraints on structural change.
See, for instance, the articles in Ariew et al. (2002).
In thinking about these, I have benefitted greatly from discussions with Katherine Ritchie and with the participants of MANCEPT 2016.
This is not the only way to approach groups. In fact, it has some shortcomings, because it biases our understanding toward assuming that groups must always have members and that they cease to exist when they are empty. That assumption would be a mistake; in Epstein (2015, chapters 11–12), I discuss broader ways of treating and identifying groups.
I use the term ‘collection’ reluctantly, without intending to make a strong commitment as to how we should interpret collections. I intend collections to have their members essentially, much like a set but without some of the mathematical baggage. I think it is also preferable to speak of collections rather than fusions, since both Alice and Alice’s hand are parts of the fusion of Alice, Bob, and Carol, while Alice’s hand is not a member of the collection of Alice, Bob, and Carol, even though Alice the person is.
Using stages to explicate properties of groups should not be confused with “stage-theories” of persistence. In this paper, I am not committing to any theory of persistence. Inasmuch as this discussion uses the tools of a particular theory, it can be translated into your favorite theory of persistence.
This may be imprecise way of putting what constitutes what. It may be better to regard a collection—not a stage—as constituting-at-t a given group (see, for instance, Baker 2000). In that case, the collection in question is the one of which the stage is a snapshot. I use stages because they make it easier to see how to treat the dynamic constitution of groups over time, but the same formulas can be restated in terms of collections at times. I am grateful to Arto Laitinen for pointing out this issue.
See Effingham (2010) for one way of doing this, though see Ritchie (2013) for fairly conclusive arguments against this approach. Ritchie thinks of groups as realized structures; on her account, the equivalent to a stage is a structure occupied by people at the nodes at a time t in world w (as seen in her criterion of identity, discussed in Sect. 1 above). See footnote 10 above for some problems with structures; in Sect. 5.2 I also raise an issue regarding defining structures in terms of binary rather than multi-place relations.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.
Here I state these as biconditionals. In Epstein (2015, chapters 11 and 13), I give more precise formulations of related principles using the “grounding” relation. That formulation is superior, but introduces complexities that would be distracting for present purposes.
This relation can of course be external, not just internal to \(s_{1}\) and \(s_{2}\). In the discussion below, I write criteria of identity not just in this “two-level” form, but also in the “one-level” form. I discuss this difference briefly in the section below; for more, see Noonan and Curtis (2017).
In Epstein (2015, pp. 194–195), I discuss how we can sometimes derive the criterion of identity from other conditions.
On the other hand, while the analysis of a kind’s constitution is important, it is often regarded as the entirety of the metaphysics of that kind. This is an unfortunate error: the membership conditions for a group are just one part of the metaphysics of the group as a whole. (The same error often occurs in the analysis of other kinds as well, not just kinds of groups.)
It may also be possible for groups of some kinds to come to exist even before there are members. I discuss the possibility of empty groups and how to denote them at the times they are empty in Epstein (2015, chapters 11 and 12).
See Epstein (2015, Ch. 12) for a more generalized treatment of criteria of identity and the idea of a “cross-identifying criterion.”
Perhaps they are distinguished from one another by other features of the music groups as well, such as instrumentation.
Amie Thomasson proposes (p.c.) that we might instead “give up the idea that there is anything very interesting and informative to say about ‘social groups’ as such, and turn our attention to other matters (like what function particular social group terms serve for us).” I am sympathetic to this, but I do think it is important to provide at least something of an alternative to the prevailing much narrower characterizations of social groups, if only to counter that narrowness. The functions of social groups of various kinds (not just terms but the groups) is, in my view, one important part of their analysis; this is part of the topic of the “anchor profile” discussed in Sect. 7.
Thomasson (2016, fn. 5).
It occurs to me that this definition improperly admits an obscure case: an object that is a group at some times or in some worlds, and that is unconstituted (e.g., an elementary or fundamental particle) at another time or world. Such an object satisfies the second condition, and also vacuously satisfies the first. To rule this out would involve complicating the definition further (or finding a more elegant formulation altogether).
Their criticism is directed specifically at Uzquiano, but I assume it is meant to apply to constitution views more generally—or, at least, those constitution views that reject the identification of groups with entities such as sets and fusions. (Some theorists, for instance, may hold that groups are some other “more familiar” kind of entity and that those entities are constituted by another familiar kind of entity.) I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue.
Nor does Uzquiano (2004) actually claim that groups are sui generis.
See, for instances, the papers in Rea (1997).
John Searle conflates these in his accounts of institutional facts; see, for instance, Searle (2010, pp. 8–9, 123ff).
The construction profile of a kind K can be understood to give essential properties of K-groups. It is not, of course, essential that a given K-group exists, nor that a given stage s is a stage of a given K-group g. What are essential are the conditions by which K-groups come to exist, continue to exist, and the conditions that s must satisfy to be a stage of g, as well as the criteria of identity for the kind.
This point is related to the argument in Fine (2003), but goes beyond it.
This is a reason for doubting that groups are usefully modeled with any particular kind of mathematical object. The value of modeling objects with mathematical analogues is typically to derive inferences from the structural constraints the objects in question share with the analogues. But the potential relations among group members are subject, in general, to few constraints.
Their metaphysics is discussed on pp. 139, 146–149, and differences between their respective actions on pp. 225–229.
I discuss the role/realizer distinction as an illustration, because it most straightforwardly conveys how group agency may be functional in a sense, and yet not a functional-role kind. There are, of course, many other accounts of functions as well. For instance, teleofunctional theories (see Buller 1999; Ariew et al. 2002) give a different approach to the relation between roles and the tokens of functional kinds. But the simpler distinction between roles and realizers illustrates the key points for present purposes.
This puts things simplistically, and of course also casts things in terms of a controversial assumption about functionalism regarding the human mind. The point, however, is to illustrate how this approach can understand the possession of intentional states.
For more detailed discussion of group attitudes and actions see Epstein (2015, chapters 14–16).
I discuss some varieties of anchoring schemas in Epstein (2014).
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I am grateful to Katherine Ritchie, Amie Thomasson, and Robin Dembroff, to participants in the 2016 ENPOSS, CollInt, and MANCEPT conferences, and to three anonymous referees, for valuable comments and suggestions.
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Epstein, B. What are social groups? Their metaphysics and how to classify them. Synthese 196, 4899–4932 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1387-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1387-y